Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood • Hacker News Board

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#51

Post by molmalo » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 10:46 AM UTC

ajb wrote: post #41

molmalo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason this worked out right (still crossing fingers) in my opinion, was because much of the tech community were on the same side in this one. But there are other occasions where this would have been a mess. So, the message would not have been clear. The congress and media would have thought "some people say yes, some people say no... nothing new".

No, I think congress and the media don't normally think about the tech community's opinion at all . [editted to add] You are right that division makes the message harder to put across. But it's not as simple as that. Take software patents: some people think software patents should be banned altogether, some people think they should be limited to five years, some people think 'obvious' patents are the problem. But mos…

I agree. Sadly, political influence costs lots of money. And thats the hardest part to overcome. So, we should first settle our differences (in your sample, how to solve the broken system) to avoid wasting time and money.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#52

Post by justincormack » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 11:11 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #38

How much money do indy film makers need for a minimum viable product? How can we help them bring it to an audience and make money?

There is already lots of Indy product. Distribution and audience seem to be the hard bits. If you can make money, the product will come, people want to make this stuff...

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#53

Post by mooki » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 11:38 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #45

mooki wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games are there today -- computers and mocap rigs all the way down. Still they are approaching hollywood movies in terms of budget. Tangled and Avatar are some of the most expensive movies of all time. There are no shortcuts to that level of polish. Doesn't matter how advanced your rendering is, you still need an army of 3D artists. Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya.

Avatar and Tangled were both pioneers of new technology of course they were expensive, but there are amateur fan effects better than those from multi-million dollar movies and TV shows 15-20 years ago. And the games of 10-15 years ago can be made a couple of people on a shoestring budget. I expect that trend to continue. >Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya. They won't use Maya. Techn…

But to take that photo you still need to find the perfect tree or building, then drag some cameras out and take pictures of it. Then once it's uploaded, set up light and do some manual adjusting because that branch is just a few degrees off. And that's just one tree or building, you need thousands for a movie.

Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big budget from small budget - perfectionism and meticulous attention to the tiniest details. Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.

It's the composition that is expensive and not the ability to perfectly reproduce reality.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#54

Post by rhizome » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 11:50 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #20

inkaudio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have tech, cost of tech is going down. But you still need talent to operate the tech, and the best talent are not cheap. The workers have unions and the ones that are not part of union do this full time and want to support at the very least a middle class lifestyle. For a hollywood movie, you don't want to use just any crew. You want the best film crew, the best makeup, wardrobe, casting, post & pre production. Al…

That's all true for now. But eventually you'll be able to throw some actors in front of a green screen and do everything--makeup, wardrobe, special effects in post production, with one guy. Hell, when computers can generate photo real actors, actors will just be people in mocap suits (except that we won't need mocap suits by then), and they won't even need to be attractive. Eventually one person will be able to creat…

Wasn't "Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow" filmed like this? I remember hearing that it was a difficult form of acting. Location shooting, or even sets, have side effects on the actors.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#55

Post by vellum » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 12:24 PM UTC

Does getting rid of our Old Entertainment Overlords really matter, if our New Entertainment Overlords are going to be doing the same thing? As long as one group of people is getting rich in an industry, the temptation is always there to start rigging the rules in your favor by working the refs. Look at the current mess we have with patents. Disrupting Hollywood is great, but we should also innovate by coming up with new ways to discourage and punish companies from attempting things like SOPA.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#56

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 12:57 PM UTC

mooki wrote: post #53

learc83 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avatar and Tangled were both pioneers of new technology of course they were expensive, but there are amateur fan effects better than those from multi-million dollar movies and TV shows 15-20 years ago. And the games of 10-15 years ago can be made a couple of people on a shoestring budget. I expect that trend to continue. >Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya. They won't use Maya. Techn…

But to take that photo you still need to find the perfect tree or building, then drag some cameras out and take pictures of it. Then once it's uploaded, set up light and do some manual adjusting because that branch is just a few degrees off. And that's just one tree or building, you need thousands for a movie. Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big bud…

Entirely agree, if you watch any artist or musician work, the amount of attention paid to detail is astonishing.

It's the same as when a programmer will constantly re-factor their code to provide better abstractions or improve efficiency. Or when a designer spends hours deciding on how to a lay an interface out.

The tools to create generic copy-paste movies and music are already out there in the same way you can build a website by buying something from template monster and copy pasting a bunch of Javascript and PHP that you found on google around.

Of course tools will get better and make efficiency better but all that will do is raise the bar. People want to see movies that will wow them , either with better special effects than they have seen before or with clever/funny dialogue etc.

The people who have the skills to do this best will want to work for the big media companies because these are the ones who will open their wallets and pay them a good salary to do what they love all day with the best tools available.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#57

Post by MrScruff » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 12:58 PM UTC

mekoka wrote: post #33

The project has an objective find an alternative to Hollywood . But like everything else, baby steps are in order. I don't know why it is assumed that a beta solution should ship with the ability to produce "Avatar" caliber productions. When it comes to technology, I'm optimistic that it has almost limitless potential to revolutionize. My instinct tells me though that a startup aimed at competing against Hollywood do…

Do you know what's involved in making high end mass-market entertainment as produced by Hollywood or the games industry? A massive amount of work by large groups of very talented, highly qualified, incredibly hard working people. You see, unlike most tech startups, making movies is a really big collaborative endeavour. As an example, let's consider post production/VFX.

VFX companies are external contractors to the studios and compete to bid on upcoming projects. Competition is tough and the studios are more than willing to go wherever they can to achieve the best price/quality ratio. Yet still VFX can amount to a significant fraction of the production budget for a modern blockbuster. The studios are happy to pay for this though since they know that VFX driven films generally do better than the alternative.

http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/

So if the VFX companies aren't making massive profits, what are their costs? The costs are employing hundreds of artists and developers to create content. And content is what people are ultimately paying money to see. It's exactly the same in the games industry.

So to create an alternative to Hollywood, you'd need to generate content that's as good as Hollywood. And you're not going to do that without lots of highly paid content creators. Doesn't seem like particularly low hanging fruit to me.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#58

Post by jiggy2011 » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:01 PM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #26

ajhit406 wrote: post #3

What hollywood has going for it, is a track-record of executing on the operations behind producing movies that make money. People who invest in movies invest for the same reasons all of us invest in anything-- to make money. Hollywood is a business, albeit one rooted in entertainment, but let's face it-- many artists are also just in it for the money. I don't think our world view of "entertainment" is going to shift…

Think in a disruptive way. Actors don't have to be paid $10 million. Special effects don't have to cost tens of millions. Equipment doesn't have to cost millions either. Make the movies the way you would build a lean start-up. And bank on innovation in the movies and scripts, rather than recycling popular content and make it very flashy. But as I mentioned in another comment, I think to kill Hollywood you need incuba…

The problem you have is that you might build a great movie startup and find some great young talent but sooner or later they are going to realise that they can make more money elsewhere once the big hollywood companies start waving their chequebooks around.

Make the movies the way you would build a lean start-up. And bank on innovation in the movies and scripts, rather than recycling popular content and make it very flashy.

Problem is that this is very high risk and the public are fickle, if your innovative idea does not take off then you have lost money. If it does take off then you will be very tempted to milk that one idea for as long as you can.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#59

Post by oflannabhra » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

vellum wrote: post #55

Does getting rid of our Old Entertainment Overlords really matter, if our New Entertainment Overlords are going to be doing the same thing? As long as one group of people is getting rich in an industry, the temptation is always there to start rigging the rules in your favor by working the refs. Look at the current mess we have with patents. Disrupting Hollywood is great, but we should also innovate by coming up with…

Yes, it does matter, because whatever replaces Hollywood will 1) let me consume better entertainment products in ways I prefer, and 2) not require legislation to remain viable. I have no problem with whatever and whomever eventually disrupts Hollywood getting rich off me buying their stuff.

I agree that lobbying power for industries like Hollywood is a problem that needs to be fixed, but that is a much larger context than entertainment. We can both replace Hollywood with a more consumer oriented industry and reform lobbying, but they are two separate goals.

Re: Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood

#60

Post by MrScruff » Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 1:11 PM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #26

ajhit406 wrote: post #3

What hollywood has going for it, is a track-record of executing on the operations behind producing movies that make money. People who invest in movies invest for the same reasons all of us invest in anything-- to make money. Hollywood is a business, albeit one rooted in entertainment, but let's face it-- many artists are also just in it for the money. I don't think our world view of "entertainment" is going to shift…

Think in a disruptive way. Actors don't have to be paid $10 million. Special effects don't have to cost tens of millions. Equipment doesn't have to cost millions either. Make the movies the way you would build a lean start-up. And bank on innovation in the movies and scripts, rather than recycling popular content and make it very flashy. But as I mentioned in another comment, I think to kill Hollywood you need incuba…

Honestly, what do you think YCombinator can bring to the table that isn't already there? How exactly do you propose to disrupt something you know nothing about? It's the equivalent of the head of the MPAA saying 'Fuck it, we'll build our own search engine'. I know the tech scene is full of very smart people, but guess what - the film industry is full of very smart people too!

The thing you have to understand is that smart, talented people are making films right now with innovative scripts and low budgets. And most of them will lose money, because nobody wants to see them. People genuinely prefer watching 'flashy' films with lots of VFX and actors who they've heard of.

Just because you want it to work differently doesn't mean it will.